Twitter is launching a new policy to combat “situations of armed conflict, public health emergencies, and large-scale natural disasters,” according to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity, in a blog post. The new policy statement comes as Twitter is in the process of acquiring Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made his opinions on ‘content filtering’ known through different tweets and postings.
Musk has also stated that the contract with Twitter cannot be finalized until the platform confirms the number of bots or false users; Twitter claims 5%, which Musk does not believe.
Twitter describes crises as “situations in which there is a widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence.” It adds that doing so will rely on “verification from multiple credible, publicly available sources, including evidence from conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, open-source investigators, journalists, and more” to ascertain whether a statement is misleading.
According to the blog, this will be a global policy that would “help to ensure viral misinformation isn’t amplified or recommended” by the platform amid crises. According to the statement, as soon as Twitter discovers “evidence that a claim may be misleading, we won’t amplify or recommend” this information throughout the platform.
To be precise, Twitter will not remove potentially misleading information; rather, it will limit its reach.
According to the blog post, examples of content that feature the Twitter warning for fraudulent or misleading content include:
Misinformation abounds on social media, frequently leading to incorrect decisions, inciting negative public sentiments, and posing major threats to public safety and social order. Misinformation transmitted on social networks has also become a major concern.
Misinformation is an objective social phenomenon that manifests itself in the context of social operations. It typically refers to material that has been extensively disseminated, either purposefully or unintentionally, without a factual basis, validation, or clarification. It has been a source of concern not only in social sciences like sociology and journalism but also in computer science and other scientific domains.
Misinformation conveyed via word-of-mouth is swiftly distributed through social media platforms due to the growth of Internet technology and social media platforms, and it has the characteristics of fission dissemination, high propagation speed, a wide range of influence, and deep impact.